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I have had the Sapphire Radeon HD7750 for a few days now and the testing is now complete, but is it as efficient for gaming as I had hoped?

This graphics card is the lowest of the ATi HD7000 series cards released for preview so far, and is considered to be a mainstream gaming card, the previews of it throughout the internet have highlighted it as a low power card, but I wanted to see the affect that it would have on the already efficient gaming system.

In this article I will be explaining the processes that I follow when choosing new hardware, I hope to give an idea of how to make more educated choices where energy efficiency is concerned.

This process is not only for those looking to reduce consumption, it also applies to anyone who wishes to dramatically increase the capabilities of their system and are unsure of which components will give the best performance.

I knew at the beginning that the G850 would consume far less energy than the Athlon X3 at stock clocks and voltages, though I was unsure of how it would fare against the X3 with power saving measures in place. For this reason, I will be concentrating my efforts on not only new vs. old, but also on new vs. the tweaked old.

There is usually only one reason that people get excited about Solid State Drives (SSDs) which is of course the speed boosts that they can deliver. There are some circles that like the idea of the silence that can be achieved without mechanical spinning drives.

Though when I first heard of SSDs it was not only the performance boost but also the power consumption savings that should be possible that put one firmly on my Christmas list.

A monitor is of course an integral part of a PC when gaming, though I have not yet considered it as a candidate for increasing energy efficiency, and so I have decided to investigate further.

There was one thing that I was almost certain of before starting; that reducing the brightness will also reduce the power consumption of your screen, though to what degree was unclear and so this will be the focus of this investigation.

Along with the brightness, I have tried many different settings to see which of them affect the energy consumption of monitors, and have found that the only one actually to have an effect is in fact the brightness.

I have been using an emergency power supply with no 80PLUS rating after I blew my last one, and have been meaning to replace it with an 80PLUS PSU for some time, but how much of a difference to energy efficiency will this upgrade bring?

The introduction of 80PLUS power supply standard a few years ago has lead to a shift towards more efficient power supplies as companies strive to adhere to the standard of 80% efficiency, more information on this standard can be found here.

Before buying the replacement XFX PRO450W PSU I had read reviews which reported an 85-87% efficiency at any load, which puts it in the 80PLUS 'Silver' rated standard rather than the 'Bronze' rated which is stated on the box. This made it a great excuse to see the savings that can be made in upgrading to a more efficient unit.